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A Troubling Uptick

One of President Obama’s worthier first-year achievements was to redirect federal sex-education financing from an abstinence-only approach to broader, more-effective programs that provide information to young people about contraceptives, pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

A new study from the Guttmacher Institute examining the latest federal data on teenage sex, births and abortion — along with the group’s own abortion statistics — suggests the wisdom of that shift.

The study found that the pregnancy rate among girls ages 15 to 19 years old increased by 3 percent in 2006 from the year before — a troubling departure after more than a decade of declining teenage pregnancy.

The teenage abortion rate also rose during the same period for the first time in more than a decade, increasing by 1 percent.

It remains to be seen whether these increases represent a longer-term trend. No doubt a number of factors contributed to the upticks, including, for example, declining contraceptive use by teenagers. But the institute also sees a link between the rise in the teenage pregnancy and abortion rates and the Bush administration’s reliance on abstinence-only sex education programs that bar teaching about contraception. This is not an unreasonable inference.

The study is timely. As part of the broader health care reform effort, abstinence-only advocates are trying hard to restore financing for the narrow, ineffective and fundamentally dishonest approach.

A version of this editorial appears in print on January 30, 2010, on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: A Troubling Uptick. Today's Paper|Subscribe